Monthly Archives: February 2013

I told you so (The Obesity Initiative)

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‘Don’t trouble me with the facts my mind is made up.’ Foghorn Leghorn

So, now the great obesity initiative is to be rolled out across the UK, driven by the UK Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AOMRC). Some time ago I wrote a blog in which I outlined exactly what they would say….and lo, they have said it. The main recommendations are:

  • Food-based standards to be mandatory in all UK hospitals
  • A ban on new fast food outlets being located close to schools and colleges
  • A duty on all sugary soft drinks, increasing the price by at least 20%, to be piloted
  • Traffic light food labelling to include calorie information for children and adolescents – with visible calorie indicators for restaurants, especially fast food outlets
  • £100m in each of the next three years to be spent on increasing provision of weight management services across the country
  • A ban on advertising of foods high in saturated fats, sugar and salt before 9pm
  • Existing mandatory food- and nutrient-based standards in England to be statutory in free schools and academies

There is more such stuff, mainly about taxing and banning. It was all wearyingly predictable. This is exactly what the ‘experts’ have been saying for the last thirty years – this time with an ‘amazing 50% added legislation’. If what you have been doing doesn’t work. Then redouble your efforts, with added punishments. That’ll work. Just like prohibition worked in the states.

Even if these were the right things to do, and had some chance of working, I would not support them. Social control through legislation absolutely must be the last resort of a democratic society. Making people do what is good for them….hmmm. Aldous Huxley had something to say on this matter. That, however, is a broader issue.

Looking specifically at some of the recommendation, starting with the concept of putting a duty on all sugary soft drinks. This will inevitably mean that people will drink more ‘diet’ drinks- without sugar in them. Will this be a good idea? Well, here is a study from the USA, and the conclusions thereof:

‘Findings from this cohort of adolescents yielded strong evidence for cross-sectional associations between diet soda consumption with weight status in both boys and girls. Specifically, youth who consumed diet soda were more likely to have a higher BMI and PBF (percentage body fat) compared to those who did not.’ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402912/

This is consistent with other studies which show that drinking ‘diet’ soda is strongly associated with a greater risk of obesity than drinking sugary soft drinks. Such evidence is not hard to find. It is rather more difficult to interpret, but that is – again – another issue.

As for trying to reduce saturated fat consumption. I can say here and now that there is not one molecule of evidence to suggest that saturated fat consumption causes obesity. Not one. As for impact on heart disease….again, nothing.

My favourite quote on this comes from the Framingham study. The single most influential study on heart disease in the world.

‘In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories on ate, the lower people’s serum cholesterol.’ Dr William Castelli, Director of the Framingham study. 1992

[Not that I think cholesterol has anything to do with heart disease, but for those of a conventional view point, lowering cholesterol is supposed to be a good thing].

As for salt….where did this come from? I have yet to see any evidence linking increased salt intake to obesity. And why would it. How could it? Salt has no calories in it; it has no impact on any metabolic parameters that I know of. And I would challenge anyone to show me any evidence from any controlled randomised study that salt restriction (in health adults) has any benefits on cardiovascular disease.

I could go on, and on. But the main point is that the ‘experts’ are trapped with a mind-set that they cannot and will not change. Like all the best zealots, they know what the causes of obesity are. To misquote from Terminator.

‘Listen, and understand. That obesity initiative is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.’

How Flora and The British Heart Foundation disproved the existence of the Higgs Boson – or maybe not

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Energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely converted to a different form. And matter, as we all know, is a form of highly concentrated energy.

Looking up Wikipedia I discovered that one gram of matter contains 9.0×1013 joules. (Theoretical total mass-energy of 1 gram of matter). This is approximately the same energy yield as the fat man atomic bomb used in World War Two.

However according to Flora and the British Heart Foundation (who have joined forces to inform the world of the terrors of saturated fat, and cholesterol, and the benefits of Flora), ten grams of matter can easily be gained or lost on the average kitchen stove.

How so, you may wonder. Surely, losing ten grams of matter would create a serious risk of releasing enough energy to wipe out a major city, and all residents contained within. Not so, it seems that if you fry an egg, it weighs 60grams. However, if you boil an egg, it weighs 50grams. See the Flora BHF poster for further detail on this remarkable fact: http://www.flora.com/PDFAuth.aspx?redirectURL=/Resources/others/pdf/HCPPdf/Fat%20Swaps.pdf

Ten grams of matter can simply disappear when you boil an egg? Quite remarkable. I think we should ask CERN to close down the large hadron collider straight away. Their search for the Higgs Boson, the reason why mass exists, and naïve reliance the Unified Field Theory itself, are clearly misguided.

All you need do, to disprove the existence of the mass/energy equation is boil an egg, and ten grams of matter simply disappear. 900,000,000,000,000 joules of energy……just gone. How remarkable is that.

But the wonders of Flora and the BHF do not stop with disproving the existence of the Higgs Boson, and the uselessness of all theoretical physicists. They can also do maths which prove that you can alter the amount of matter contained within the egg as well.

According to this self-same remarkable British Heart Foundation/Flora poster, a fried egg contains 2.4 grams of ‘bad’ fat, and 4.5 grams of good fat.  On the other hand a boiled egg contains a mere 1.6 grams of ‘bad’ fat and 3.0 grams of good fat. So, eating a boiled egg means that you reduce intake of ‘bad’ fat by 0.8 grams. (Bad fat is saturated fat, by the way).

For those of you with a mathematical bent, you may have noticed that if  a fried egg weighs 60g, and boiled egg weighs 50g, it is 20% heavier. Yet it manages to contain 50% more bad fat (2.4g/1.6g = 1.5). Aha, you might be thinking, when you fry an egg good fat (polyunsaturated), is converted to saturated fat – or something of the sort.

Well, clearly not so (and biologically impossible). Because a fried egg also contains 4.5 grams of good fat, whilst a boiled egg contains 3.0 grams of good fat. So, the ratio of good fat in a fried egg and a boiled egg is also 1.5 (3.0/1.5 = 1.5). In other words, exactly the same ratio as in a fried egg.

So, not only do fried eggs weigh more – 20% more. They also contain significantly more good and bad fat – 50%, at the same time. Bringing all this information together we find that, according to the scientists at Flora and the BHF, a fried egg ends up 1.2 times as massive as boiled eggs and contains 1.5 times as much bad and good fat at the same time. Yes, of course.

My solution to all this is simple, sneak up on the eggs from behind, and damn well fry the ones that thought they were going to be boiled. In this way you can reduce bad fat in a fried egg from 2.4 grams to 1.6 grams. Hah! I bet the scientists in Flora never thought of that – did they.

I am so glad that the British Heart Foundation have brought keen scientific rigor to their partnership with Flora. If I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying.